'Here' and 'Now' Pedagogy

The teaching and learning process needs fundamental change. With pieces of information and knowledgeable ever-accessible even on move, one does not need to store them in their mind as it is being required so far. Generally, learners need less to memorise and more to develop the power to process information and knowledge. Memorisation and understanding go together but often the former cripple the latter by its sheer weight. Now, with technology,  people can unburden themselves greatly.   

Here, my concern is human beings knowing about humanity and their ways of living. And, the task of pedagogy gets light and simple in this context presently. I feel two major enablers of civility, humanism and rationalism, remain grossly unrealised despite being in play for centuries and hold great promise of further civilizing the human race. The storage of knowledge in mind has been a highly desirable value, and so the tendency to store pieces of knowledge without filtering them for their uses and effects affects the knowledge processing abilities of the knowledge bearer.  They act as coolies carrying a load of knowledge on them rather than being masters of knowledge. Moreover, knowledge overwhelms the instinct and drive of knowing: it subdues the persons carrying it. This can be reversed to bring things to their normal state: an evolutional anomaly can be undone now. 

'Here' and 'now' must be the starting point of the pedagogy and 'being' and  'phenomenal' must be the focus. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Another Onslaught on Globalisation

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has occasioned another round of onslaught on Globalisation. They say the war has proved the notion wrong that economic interdependence prevents wars. They inadvertently cancel yet another merit of globalisation. China's annexation posturings towards  Taiwan are seen in the same vein. 

They overlook the fact that people across the world suffer more as a result of the war and feel concerned as the world is globalised. And, there are efforts to check and counter the aggression. Globalisation reduces the chances of wars but does not eliminate them. For that other political agencies are needed. One must see with great concern that the democratisation of nations has a long way to go: the greater number of people in the world are denied of the dignity of self-governance. 

Once, the developed Western countries favoured globalisation as they owned multinational corporations and advanced technologies, but soon with the rise of the rest the advantages did not hold. At the same time, some roguish nations started to misappropriate globalization by using their sovereign powers. This made the West apprehensive of globalisation. 

The fact remains that liberal globalization helps the world and different peoples. It helps reduce conflicts and facilitate prosperity. The world must unite for itself. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Citizenship and Subjecthood

Citizens own their nation therefore they are citizens. If it is the other way around, they are subjects. Authoritarian and collective States possess their people. It is not that they collectively control each one of them on equal terms, rather it is a highly graded system in which people are herded and controlled in layers by designated persons and the supreme leader lords all. Some possess many things as they are in command and the majority do not hold even their own persons. This is what ideologists or leftists strive for. For them, people's lives are quite expendable as the surging corona epidemic proves.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Ideology and Ethnicity

 Ideology and Ethnicity

Ideology may be categorised as I do here into one which people have as an evolved integrated worldview, as the traditions and social ecosystem morph into one, and the other one, the one created and imposed. The working ideology at a particular location generally exists in a fused state. 

Manufactured ideologies apparently work as the level of ideas and intellect and seemingly transcend ethnic divides. The point here is that doctrines have the compatibility trait. A manufactured doctrine may or may not be compatible with the socio-ecological ideology of a particular geography. For instance, Leftism germinated in the West but flourished in the East (including the European East). 

Further, even at a particular location, communities have different working ideologies and similarly, they find one or the other manufactured ideologies more suited to their collective psyche. 

Even individuals within an ethnic group may get swayed by the ideology of the other ethnic group, as every community has rebel elements. But the conformists define the rules, not the rebels. 

Ethnicity and ideology thus have symbiotic relations. 

Humanism and cosmopolitanism stand in opposition to not only ethnicity but also ideology, the manufactured ones.  

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Education and Liberty

Liberty is awareness, and therefore, one needs education to get liberated. Here, however, more pertinent is how one means education and liberty. Liberty is very powerfully perceived as liberation from worldliness and with the goal of being united with the Ultimate. This is indeed a noble goal and one must see its virtuosity in life. However, liberty concerns life also besides the afterlife; life, though ephemeral and uncertain, is of paramount importance here and now, and life has a continuity collectively and impacts our being mentally as well physically. Liberation has this secular aspect too, related to time and space. It makes life livable; one has the security of life and possessions, and the freedom to do what one likes but without hurting others. This post addresses the latter liberty. Education is primarily about enabling people for freedom. Human beings from being a predator as well as prey in the food chain in their primitive stage facing other predators, other creatures of killing contact, their own ilk, and natural forces, and that too often and mortally, have travelled a great distance. Every human step has been facilitated and consolidated by education. However, all the peoples have not covered the same distance. The variations in peoples' advances testify to the quality of their education. Education must therefore require liberated scrutiny; people must examine the content and method of education for keeping it geared to its function continuously. People often perceive education as sacred, not to be accessed with 'profane' mundane concerns. And, such doings are often, very ironically, dictated by secular ideologies, which seek unquestionable following from the people.

Education and liberty go together.

Niraj Kumar Jha